Marines put gag on Guantanamo attorney

Beatings common, says paralegal who heard guards brag

Miranda Leitsinger, The Associated Press

Published 10:00 pm, Sunday, October 15, 2006

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- A paralegal and a military lawyer who brought forward allegations about prisoner abuse at the Guantanamo Bay detention center have been ordered not to speak with the news media, lawyers and a military spokeswoman said Saturday.

Marine Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, who represents a detainee at the U.S. naval base in eastern Cuba, filed a complaint with the Pentagon last week alleging that abuse was ongoing at the prison. He attached a sworn statement from his paralegal, Sgt. Heather Cerveny, in which she said several Guantanamo guards bragged in a bar about beating detainees, describing it as common practice.

Muneer Ahmad, a civilian defense lawyer for Omar Khadr, a Canadian detainee whose military counsel is Vokey, said Vokey and Cerveny were ordered Friday by the Marines not to speak with the media.

A spokeswoman for the Marines confirmed the order, saying Vokey's supervisor -- Col. Carol Joyce, the Marines' chief defense counsel -- had directed him not to communicate with the media "pending her review of the facts."

Reached by telephone, Vokey declined to comment, saying, "I can't even talk about it." When asked if he was going to abide by the order for the time being, he said, "Yes."

Cerveny, reached by telephone late Saturday, said she disagreed with the order but also would abide it.

Pentagon spokesman Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon said it was "common practice" for members of the military to avoid public discussion of matters under investigation. Gordon referred further queries to the Marines.

Ahmad said Vokey also was barred from talking with the media about anything related to the military commissions -- tribunals set up to try detainees. He said he did not know how the order was issued and that Vokey previously had the military's authorization to speak with the media.

"I think he is very concerned about his ability to perform his job as a lawyer," Ahmad said.

Cerveny, 23, visited Guantanamo last month and has said she spent an hour with the guards at the military club. She said the guards stopped discussing beating detainees after finding out that she works for a detainee's legal team.

"It was a general consensus that I (detected) that as a group this is something they did, that this was OK at Guantanamo, that this is how the detainees get treated," Cerveny said in a telephone interview Thursday.